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Flow Preference?

My son is 6 1/2 weeks. When we were in the hospital they ended up giving him a bottle since he was not latching well or gaining weight.

For the past 6 weeks, I have been pumping and giving what I pump to him in a bottle. I offer my breast but he will only suck for a few minutes before crying and getting frustrated. I'll keep offering my breast to him but it is always the same- him eating but then getting mad and refusing to nurse. The milk he does receive directly from me seems minimal since he will still take about 1-1.5 of expressed BM via bottle after nursing session. I try switching positions and sides but it all ends the same.

I can't eliminate the bottle completely because that is what his babysitter uses when I am at work. It is affecting my milk supply because I have to use formula when I don't produce enough. Each time I pump without nursing firsthand (at work) I get 2-2.5 oz every 3 hours. If I pump after nursing I pump 1oz. (I use the Medela Pump in style advanced.)

There was also a time when he started treating the bottles like he did my breast. My mother-in-law poked an extra hole in all the nipples because she thought he wanted a faster flow. Sure enough it worked and he continues to enjoy bottles. That is why I think he is preferring a faster flow from my breasts and getting so frustrated. Please help! I want to be able to nurse him without having to give him a bottle afterwards. I want my breast to be enough! What can I do!??

Re: Flow Preference?

When we were transitioning from EPing back to breastfeeding, my son would take more from a bottle after I breastfed him and I thought that it was a supply issue. But I think he was just eating more because we were offering it. I think he would keep eating from a bottle no matter how much we offered. I don't know if that's the case for your son, I wouldn't want you to underfeed him, but that seemed to be the case for us. Just a thought!

Re: Flow Preference?

It can be done to get baby back to the breast...but your baby very probably does prefer the fast flow of a bottle. So, one first step could be to slow the bottles back down a bit. Like try a different bottle. A Breastflow is very much like nursing, and it could be a first step.

You could try offering supplemental feedings at your breast with an SNS. I personally prefer the Lact-Aid SNS.

And try some breast compressions to make your flow faster and stronger and get baby interested again. You can also try switching sides, over and over, so baby will keep nursing.

EPing is so much work that if I could nurse my baby (he has a cleft palate and thus cannot) that I'd do anything possible to nurse instead of pumping.

Re: Flow Preference?

Trying a different bottle is a good idea. I'll try that when I leave him with the sitter during work. Just yesterday I tried the silicone nipple shield and he seems to nurse off that quite effectively. I am not sure if that helps the flow issue or maybe the issue could be latching since the nipple shield is more shaped like a bottle and easier to latch on to. I am going to give this nipple shield another week or so and then contact a LC if nothing is improving.

Thanks for all the support! BF is so much harder than I thought it would be. I am going to keep trying though!

Re: Flow Preference?

Use a nipple shield if you have to; there's nothing wrong with that. The research that says it could decrease your supply is based on the old ones that were thicker and decreased stimulation to the nipple and is not an issue with the ones available today.

Re: Flow Preference?

You've gotten great advice so far. I definitely second the breastflow bottles (though they don't work for every baby). It might take a little time for your LO to adjust, though.

I also second the idea of an SNS. That was a super-useful tool for getting my second to the breast and fed adequately when he was learning to nurse (about two months of age).

I did need to use a nipple shield to help him on my difficult anatomy. The older ones were much more likely to reduce supply, but it's not an impossibility with the newer ones. They have to be the right size (and they don't make really large sizes), and for me with large nipples, they did prevent effective let down and would have affected supply a lot had I not been pumping regularly at the time I was using it. I still did need to use it for a time.

If you have access to an LC, you could get lots of helpful tips and hands-on support. If it is a latch issue, she might be able to help you correct that without having to go down the nipple shield route at all. (Or she might tell you that it's a good route.) Correcting a faulty latch, if it is that, is really important to getting breastfeeding well established.

I wish you both very well.

I breast milk fed my Blossom for fifteen months (after exclusively pumping for thirteen). My Bud (nineteen months) is still nursing directly (after a rough start that included a few months of pumping and supplementing with mommy's milk).